I love the US Air Force!

My niece, Rachel, graduated from Dordt last year and works as a youth pastor in northwest Iowa. Members of her church often travel to Haiti on mission teams. This year they asked her along so she could check if this type of mission trip might be appropriate for the youth of the church.

The Mission to Haiti camp is based in a suburb of Port-au-Prince; from there, they traveled daily by bus on missions to villages. They were returning to camp on Tuesday when the earthquake struck. They had to walk back to base in the dark, surrounded by chaos and confusion, death and destruction.

They provided care to the injured and helped carry away the dead. They ran out of medical supplies and used boards for splints and torn sheets for bandages. Since two doctors were on the team, they were better able to provide care than most teams would have been. They slept outside because of the aftershocks. Rachel had about four hours of sleep and then gave her bed to a dentist who had been stitching wounds all night.

The next day the team spent twelve hours outside the Port-au-Prince airport, trying to catch an evacuation flight. They made no progress. They considered trying to get to Santo Domingo to fly out.

But in the middle of the night, a US Air Force C-17 came to get them. It flew them to an Air Force Base in New Jersey. Fox News welcomed them back to American soil. The next day police escorted their bus to Newark, where they boarded an afternoon flight to Dallas. From Dallas, they were scheduled to fly to Omaha.

Now you know why I love the good ol' USA and the United States Air Force!